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Summary: Research Methods / Methodology 1 - Psychology Bachelor - year 1, period 1 - English $4.29
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Summary: Research Methods / Methodology 1 - Psychology Bachelor - year 1, period 1 - English

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Includes all pages of the Research Methods book that were given as exam material. My final grade for this course was an 8.0 and I studied just this summary and attended most lectures.

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  • All parts of the book that were instructed to be part of the final exam material.
  • August 21, 2020
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Research Methods in Psychology
Chapter 1-14
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Semester 1, Period 1
Chapter 1
Research producers and consumers: share commitment to empiricism
Producers:
 Research scientists
 Professors
Consumers:
 Therapists
 Teachers
 Entrepreneurs
 Counselors
 Police officers
Evidence-based treatments: therapies that are supported by research

Empiricism: involves using evidence from the senses or from other instruments that
assist the senses as the basis for conclusions
 Aim is to be systematic, rigorous and to make work independently verifiable

Theory: set of statements that describes general principles about how variables
relate to one another
Hypothesis or prediction: the specific outcome the researcher expects to observe in
a study if the theory is accurate
 Most researchers test theories with a series of empirical studies, each
designed to test an individual hypothesis
Data: set of observations

The best theories are:
 Supported by data from research studies
 Multiple studies, variety of methods to address different aspects of
theories
 Falsifiable: theory must lead to hypotheses that, when tested, could actually
fail support it
 Parsimonious: when theories explain data equally well, scientists opt for the
simpler explanation

Theories don’t prove anything
 Scientists evaluate theories based on the weight of the evidence, for and
against

Applied research: done with a practical problem in mind; conducted in a particular
real-world context
Basic research: aims to enhance the general body of knowledge
 Generated knowledge may be applied to real-world issues later on
Translational research: use of lessons from basic research to develop and test
applications to health care, psychotherapy or other forms of treatment and
intervention



1

,Basic research > Translational research > Applied research

Research publication
 Through scientific journals
 Articles are peer-reviewed
 Read primarily by other scientists and psychology students

Journalism: contrasts journals in that it includes the kinds of news and commentary
that is read or heard on television, magazines, newspapers and the internet
 Not written by scientists, meant for general public, special education is not
required to understand their content

Journalists publishing psychological research may have benefits
 Better understanding of psychologists’ work
 Better understanding of self and environment > change of habits
 However, story should be important and reported accurately


Chapter 2
Experience has no comparison group
 Comparison group: enables us to compare what would happen both with and
without the thing we are interested in
 Basing conclusions on personal experience is problematic because
daily life usually doesn’t include comparison experiences
 Experience is confounded – even if a change occurs, there is no
certainty in what caused it
 In contrast: basing conclusions on systematic data collection provides
a comparison group

Confounds: several possible explanations for an outcome in real-world situations
 Occurs when you think one thing caused an outcome but in fact other things
changed too
 Careful controls are used in a research setting to make sure only one
factor at a time is changed

Confederate: an actor playing a specific role for an experimenter

Behavioral research is probabilistic; its findings are not expected to explain all cases
of all time, but rather a certain proportion

Examples of biased reasoning:
 Being swayed by a good story (catharsis, Scared Straight)
 Being persuaded by what comes easily to mind
 Availability heuristic: states that things that pop up easily in our mind
tend to guide our thinking, might lead us to wrongly estimate the
number of something or how often something happens
 Failing to think about what we cannot see: when testing relationships, we
often fail to look for absences
 Present/present bias: our failure to consider appropriate comparison
groups – Dr. Rush bloodletting study

2

,  Instances where treatment was absent, but outcome was still present
are overlooked
 The availability heuristic plays a role in the present/present bias
because instances in the present/present cell of a comparison stand
out
 Present/present bias adds tendency to ignore absent cells, which
are essential for testing relationships
 To avoid this bias, ask: “Compared to what?”
 Focusing on the evidence we like best
 Confirmation bias: tendency to look only at information that agrees
with what we already believe
 Biased about being biased
 Bias blind spot: the belief that we are unlikely to be susceptible to
biases previously described
 Makes us trust out faulty reasoning even more
 Can make it difficult for us to initiate the scientific theory-data
cycle

To be an empiricist:
 Base believes on systematic information from the senses
 Strive to interpret the data you collect in an objective way; guard against
common biases

Before taking advice from authorities:
 Ask about the source of their ideas
 Objective and systematic comparison of conditions?
 Reference to research evidence? > if yes, attention worthy

Scientific sources
 Journal articles
 Empirical journal articles: report results of an empirical research study
 Review journal articles: provide a summary of all the published studies
that have been done in one research area
 Meta-analysis may be used: quantitative technique that
combines result of many studies and gives a number that
summarizes magnitude > effect size of a relationship
o Valued technique; doesn’t allow cherry-picking and
weighs each study proportionately
 Chapters in edited books
 Collection of chapters on a common topic; each written by a different
contributor
 Not the first time a study is reported, rather a summary of research
and explanation of theory behind it
 Good way to find a summary of a specific person’s work
 Not as rigorously peer-reviewed as scientific sources
 Psychologists and psychology students audience
 Full-length books
 Common in other disciplines but not so much in psychology

Finding scientific sources

3

,  PsycINFO
 Google Scholar

Components of an empirical journal article:
 Abstract
 Summary of the article describing hypotheses, method and major
results
 Introduction
 Explains topic of study, background for research and the study’s
specific research questions/goals/hypotheses
 Method
 Participants, materials, procedure and apparatus
 Results
 Tables and figures summarizing key results
 Qualitative and qualitative data
 Discussion
 Summarizes and discusses the study’s importance, gives alternative
explanations for data and raises new questions
 References

Reading with purpose
1. What is the argument?
 Abstract, introduction, first paragraph of discussion
2. What is the evidence to support the argument?
 Method and results

Wikis as a research source
 Not comprehensive in their coverage
 No comprehensive reference list
 Details might be incorrect until they are fixed
 Vandalism is a potential problem


Chapter 3
Variable: something that varies, and which must at least have two levels/values
Constant: something that could potentially vary but has only one level in the study
in question
Measured variable: one whose levels are simply observed and recorded
Manipulated variable: variable a researcher controls, usually by assigning study
participants to different levels of that variable
 Some variables can be either measured or manipulated – hair color

Conceptual variables/constructs: abstract concepts defined at the theoretical level
by conceptual definitions
Operational variables/operationalizations: operational definitions of variables
created by testing hypotheses with empirical research

Claim: argument someone is trying to make
 Frequency claims: describe a particular rate or degree of a single variable
 Variables are always measured, not manipulated

4

,  Association claims: argue that one level of a variable is likely to be associated
with a particular level of another variable
 Variables that are associated are said to correlate or to be related
 When one variable changes, the other tends to change
 Correlational study: study in which variables are measured ant the
relationship between them is tested
 Positive association/correlation: in which high goes with high,
and low goes with low > scatterplot can be used to represent an
association
 Negative association/correlation: high goes with low, and low
goes with high
 Zero association/correlation
 Causal claims: argue that one of the variables is responsible for changing the
other
 Have two variables
 Start with a positive or negative association
 Causal verbs tend to be more active and forceful, suggesting one
variable comes first in time and then acts on the other
 Causal claims that contain tentative language – could, may, seem,
suggest, sometimes, potentially – is still considered a causal claim
 It must be established that two variables are correlated
 It must be established that the causal variable came first, and
the outcome variable came later
 It must be established that no other explanations exist for the
relationship

Validity: refers to the appropriateness of a conclusion or decision

Interrogating frequency claims > focus on construct, external, statistical validity
Construct validity: refers to how well a conceptual variable is operationalized
 Asks how well a study measured or manipulated – operationalized – a
variable
 To ensure construct validity, it must be established that each variable has
been measured reliably, and that different levels accurately correspond to
true differences
External validity/generalizability: concerns how participants were chosen and how
well they represent the intended population
 Concerns how well the results of a study generalize to, or represent, people
or contexts beside those in the original study
Statistical validity: the extent to which a study’s statistical conclusions are accurate
and reasonable
 Percentages reported in frequency claims are usually accompanied by a
margin of error estimate

Interrogating association claims > focus on construct, external, statistical validity
Construct validity: assess the construct validity of each variable
External validity: ask whether the claim can be generalized to other populations,
contexts, times, or places
Statistical validity: the extent to which the statistical conclusions are accurate and
reasonable

5

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